# Looking for assoc. wizards

Jason Nolan (jnolan@oise.utoronto.ca)
Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:33:10 PDT

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    Hello;

    I'm in the neighbourhood to solicit some associate and mentoring
    wizards for two MOO projects that will be continuing for the next 2-3
    years.  I'll make this rather lengthy request in 3 parts: who we need,
    who we are, and what we're doing. That way you may edit yourself out of
    the picture at any point along the path if you feel it no longer
    applies to you.

    Thanks in advance for your interest.

    Many of you have been gracious enough to help me out over the past 2
    years as I battled with bits of moo-speak, but now I need to get
    active.  I'm looking for at least two associate wizards who are willing
    to spend 1-2 hours a week minimum helping with MOOoise and HolonMOO,
    and I'm also looking for 2-3 mentor wizards who will commit to putting
    up with well thought out and still moronic questions such as "How come
    I can e-mail new user names and passwords to any place on the net
    except to our sister machine?"  This is nothing new to what goes on
    Moo-Cows, except that you would be on file as part of the project, and
    I wouldn't feel like I was 'bothering' you with the questions. Also,
    assoc. wizards would be directed to contact you directly for whatever
    reason.  People interested in generic mooology, Java interface and
    designing learning environments would probably find the project most
    interesting.  The main page for this is
    http://noisey.oise.utoronto.ca/moooise.html

    If my funding proposals go as planned, there would be minor honorariums
    all around with more for intensive or special contracted sub-projects.
    It probably would not be more then $1k for the life of the project
    though ;-(  You will also get a cool t-shirt out of the deal.  C. Regis
    Wilson can attest to the coolness of the T, eh?  I'm getting no money
    myself for this project either ;-(

    We are at this point, basically me: M.A. medievial religious poetry,
    Ph.D. candidate in Transformative and Holistic Learning (stop laughing)
    at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of
    Toronto, and an RS/K6 that I've got control over... so no worries about
    loosing the server cause an admin type doesn't like it.  My
    dissertation project (to be hosted on HolonMOO) is entitled "Delinking
    learning from schooling: student bioregional narratives in virtual
    environments" or something like that... I've not looked recently.
    HolonMOO is nothing more than about 150 pages of papers, and a virginal
    up-to-date LambdaCore and server.  IT works, and it is vacant.  It will
    house about 200 students from Toronto, and cities in Alberta, Iceland
    and Japan who will convert bio-regional narratives into virtual
    spaces... blaa, blaa, blaa. I've got all that on file at
    http://noisey.oise.utoronto.ca/holon.html

    Everything is happening on MOOoise.  At a distance, I have about 10
    graduate students who are involved and use MOOoise for bits of
    research, and for learning about MOOs, but little is going on aside
    from a weekly meetings of a group of songwriters.  Things have been
    picking up a lot since August, and I expect that we'll see continuous
    use of MOOoise by a dozen or so, with about 100 casual users this term.
     I've contracted with University of Toronto High school to arrange for
    a half-dozen students to help with things as well, building spaces and
    hosting visitors.

    HOWEVER, the big things with MOOoise are the interface and tutorial.
    Presently, we have MOOca Java applet that is stable on most OS, and
    some Javascript tutorials underway @describe, @move & @build that pass
    data to the MOO through the applet using live connect (if my memory
    serves me). THis will all be moved over to HolonMOO as they pass the
    test on MOOoise. We would welcome anyone interested in working with
    Dave the Javophile or me the Javascriptorium Brother.

    So, if you're interested and willing to help out... I'd like to know
    the following:

    - Name

    - Snail Address

    - phone number

    - e-mail and URL

    - MOOs on which you've worked along with a reference or two of wizards
    who are running MOOs (so that I can check to see if you're a Moo-ocidal
    db killer ;-)

    - the capacity to which you would be willing or interested in
    participating

    - any individual quirks or whatever that you think we should know
    about.

    Thanks again to all who've helped out in the past and have unofficially
    offered to help in the future... now I'm looking for a committed soul
    or two with less of a social life than I have.

    Jason

    This is a recent funding proposal outline of my
    work...<fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger>

    I propose to study an emerging form of Educational Computer-mediated
    Communication commonly referred to as MOOs. A MOO is a form of
    text-based multi-user virtual reality software. This interactive
    environment allows multiple users to program and develop models of
    people, places and things, and share them with others across the
    Internet. The software offers students the potential for a rich and
    dynamic learning environment. The educational use of MOOs
    (SchoolNetMOO, MIT's Moose-Crossing and MediaMOO) is growing. Although
    there have been studies of on-line learning, there has been no
    educational research into MOOs (Harasim et al., 1995; Mason, 1992).
    MOOs need to be assessed for their educational potential.

     In this study, I will design, set up and run a version of Xerox's
    LambdaMOO software that I will call HolonMOO, and conduct research with
    classes in Toronto, and cities in Alberta, Iceland and Japan. Students
    will work with classroom and on-line curriculum to develop virtual
    models of real life or imagined places based on the writing component
    of this project. The classroom exercises will consist of writing
    journal and peer-edited narratives based on exercises intended to help
    students identify important elements of their lives and community.
    Students will be provided with a suite of Web pages under development
    at OISE/UT. These pages contain reference and technical learning
    materials to help the students develop virtual spaces and learn how to
    interact with other students on-line. Reference materials will cover
    concepts like how to connect to the MOO, on-line etiquette, and how to
    move about the MOO. Students will learn how to communicate with others
    using mail, news, paging, speaking, whispering and emoting commands,
    and how to build, describe, and program rooms and objects. There will
    also be curriculum materials to facilitate the integration of the MOO
    with the classroom.

    MOOs promote collaborative and constructivist learning. The environment
    is designed to allow users to build objects, such as rooms, buildings,
    cities, mountains, or even physics experiments or virtual
    representations of a local ecosystem. A MOO can be a social space or a
    virtual exploration of a work of fiction. MOOs offer a unique
    educational resource for the development, sharing and communicating
    within student developed virtual narrative spaces. This sharing takes
    the form of peer-peer teaching and collaborative work on school. MOOs
    can help students in "making connections between mind and body; self
    and environment; subject areas; logical and intuitive thinking" to help
    expand student notions of what it means to communicate (Miller et al.,
    1990).

    I am requesting funds to study the HolonMOO environment's potential for
    developing a learning community, and skills in programming, writing and
    communication. In HolonMOO, students will design, program and present
    artifacts, interact with other students from around the world, critique
    each other's work as well as share and explore virtual experiences.
    HolonMOO will model a student-centered learning alternative to
    classroom-based learning as well as provide a foundation for assessing
    the value of this type of learning environment. This project will build
    on my ongoing work in collaborative learning (Hidi et al., 1996) and
    curriculum development (Nolan, 1996). Resources have been provided by
    IBM, Netscape, and OISE/UT.

    The first of three phases of this project is the development of
    curriculum, HolonMOO, related Internet software over a 12-month period.
    This phase is underway, with the assistance of students at OISE/UT. The
    second phase will be 10-months of pilot testing with Toronto students,
    revising curriculum, software and research design, and conducting
    workshops to prepare the classroom teachers. The final phase begins
    with a 3-month period to allow students to become familiar with
    HolonMOO. Data will be gathered over a 5-month period, and the analysis
    of the data and the writing of the research report will take 6 months.

    The analysis of the project will be conducted using qualitative inquiry
    (Eisner, 1991) and on-line quantitative research techniques (Reil &
    Harasim, in press) to assess social and knowledge gains. Qualitative
    inquiry will consider the social elements of learning using
    ethnographic tools to generate thick descriptions of what is going on.
    An analysis of dynamic and static aspects of the learning environment
    using qualitative techniques will help determine cognitive gains, as
    well as a baseline model of student interaction with and in the virtual
    environment.

    Quantitative factors that will be considered according to student,
    class, age group and gender variables include the frequency and
    duration of connections, time spent in the construction and exploration
    of narrative spaces and in communication. Resulting statistics will
    build a picture of student engagement in the learning environment
    (Mason, 1992). How students assist each other, how they share
    information, organize themselves, and initiate interactions will be
    analyzed (Rice, 1990).

    There are technical, social and pedagogical questions to be answered by
    this project. Does the social and collaborative nature of MOOs
    encourage female students to work with computers? Does the telling of
    personal stories give students a sense of place, empowerment, and
    control over their own learning? Does the use of MOOs strengthen
    students' ability to present organized and sophisticated ideas? Are
    MOOs useful tools for learning? Are there indications that learning
    community forms in MOOs?  This research will make an assessment of to
    what extent MOOs offer a collaborative learning environment for
    students' cognitive and affective development.<bigger>

    </bigger></bigger></fontfamily>

    Jason Nolan

    Department of Curriculum Teaching and Learning

    Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

    University of Toronto

    MooOISE & Mooca Java, Holistic Learning Conference,

    and Towards an Ecozoic Curriculum sites at:

    http://noisey.oise.utoronto.ca